Finally Got it Sorted
by Evia Wingjade
Summary: Edmund was quite the unpleasant character when he left boarding school, but what was the reason for his behavior? I'm knew at this, so please let me know what you think! Rated T for some foul language.


Disclaimer: Narnia is not mine, I'm just borrowing it and the related characters from CS Lewis, Disney, and Walden Media.

Dedication: I wrote this is for my best friend, who reads all my stories even when she doesn't particularly like the characters they're about. ;)

We all know that Edmund became a "beast" of a sibling after he went to boarding school. CS Lewis was never very specific as to why, though, and I wanted to explore that. Please let me know how I did!

***  
He was normal enough to start with. Sure, maybe Edmund was a little quiet around strangers, but he came alive with his siblings. As with most little boys, he looked up to his big brother, he adored his older sister, and he tolerated his little sister…he even liked her most of the time.

He had never wanted to go to the boarding school. He knew Peter liked it well enough, but Peter made friends much easier than Edmund did, and everyone knew it. So with much trepidation, and many promises of loyalty from his big brother, Edmund boarded the train. He had never doubted Peter before, and he saw no reason so start now.  
***

Edmund knew that Peter would do his best to sort out **anyone** who gave him trouble. But the pity on his face the first time Edmund told him that a couple of the bigger boys had gotten hold of him was unbearable. Peter had, he knew, found those boys. He calmly introduced himself, though they knew who he was, and laid each boy flat with one good swing a piece.

The whole group made Ed pay for it. He tried to fight back, but almost all were bigger than he. When Peter saw him two days later—they were in different lessons and Edmund had avoided his older brother in the lunch room—his jaw fell open.

"Who was it Ed?" Peter asked, surveying the dull yellow bruising on the other's face. Edmund just shook his head. "Ed, I'll take care of it," Peter started gently, reaching for his shoulder.

"Shove off!" Edmund snapped, coming to his feet. "I don't want you taking care of it." Peter stood too, surprised and confused.

"What's going on, Ed? Did they threaten to do worse if you told me…" and Edmund flinched, confirming Peter's theory. When Peter moved to touch his shoulder, Edmund stepped away. "Ok Ed, have it your way," Peter said quietly. "But I'm still going to have a word with them."  
*

Edmund had to smile at the aftermath of Peter's "word" with the other boys. He had picked a fight in the middle of the hallway, during class change; this ensured not only that Edmund's attackers had gotten a good thumping, but they All got caught and punished. Edmund, standing outside his brother's room, overheard Peter say to one of his friends that the school punishment was well worth it. Ed smiled, and almost came round the corner into sight, until Peter's friend commented,  
"The whole lot of them didn't get one decent hit in edgewise, did they Pevensie?"

"Course not," Peter replied easily, "how thick do you think I am?"

Edmund walked away, anger and shame battling for control. So his wondrous older brother thought he was thick? Not surprising; all Peter had known in the month since they'd arrived to the school that year was cleaning up his messes. No more, though. Edmund refused to be seen as the weak one of the Pevensie brothers.  
*

The very next day Edmund began trying to reform everyone's opinion of him. Rather than cowering when Michael Jameson shoved him between classes, Ed regained his footing, turned and tripped the bigger boy, then melted into the crowd, a satisfied smirk on his face. Later, when Jameson and his mate Jack Sullivan came after him in the changing room in gym, Edmund tried to look confident as he pushed past them. When one grabbed him, he spun and kicked the other in the shin. He almost got away, they were so surprised. The only good thing, Edmund reflected throughout the pummeling, was that they now avoided hitting his face. It had got around that he refused when Peter offered to handle things for him, so they figured he wouldn't go to the older Pevensie now. They were right.

After the first month, the teachers got a handle on things and put a stop to the worst of it. The bullies were relegated to shoving and pinching—still hard enough to bruise, but at least they were no longer drawing blood. Edmund suffered in silence. He brushed it off or lied when Peter asked if he was still having trouble with anyone. He was careful not to change clothes with his dorm-mates in the room; he was sure that if they saw the bruises he almost always sported these days, they would tell Peter, and he would be forced to accept help. He would be proven weak.

But in silence, Edmund's bitterness grew. Peter was smart and funny and well-liked. Edmund was intelligent, but he rarely spoke and people thought him a snob. In truth, he had simply learned that his best defense was to avoid being noticed. It never occurred to him that it was also his greatest weakness. Things carried on for months, and about a week after they got back from the Christmas hols, a boy called Ryan Kale sat down with Edmund at the end of a lunch table. They were dorm-mates, and Kale was one of the few people who cared for Ed's company. Kale told Edmund quietly that he Knew what the older boys had been up to—were still up to—and wasn't it about time he told so they would be stopped?

Unfortunately for Kale, this thought had been plaguing Edmund for weeks. If he told Peter over hols…if he told one of the teachers when they got back…if he told anyone, mightn't it stop? But then he would remember what had happened the first time he told Peter, and lose his nerve. And of course, that made Edmund very angry with himself. So rather than accepting that he was afraid to ask for help, he convinced himself that he was being strong by dealing with things alone.

At first, Edmund just shook his head, muttering that they'd get board of picking on him eventually anyway, so long as he didn't really annoy them. Kale told him that was rubbish, and if he didn't know it, he was a fool. And Edmund, who of course knew very well that it was rubbish, lost his temper. He split Kale's lip, bloodied his nose, and blacked his right eye. Edmund was angry at himself, but he took it out on his friend. He told himself later, when trying to rationalize what he'd done, that Kale should've minded his own business, and not called him a fool. He could hardly stand the guilt, remembering one of his few friends in a mess on the floor.

"What on earth Happened Ed?" Peter had demanded later that afternoon—none too quietly. Or privately either.

Edmund wanted to say that he didn't know. He wanted to explain himself, and make Peter stop looking at him like he hardly recognized him—but there were people around. Some of those people, Edmund knew, would enjoy making sure he never forgot any weakness he showed just now. So he lied.

"He called me a fool," he answered coolly, "so I shut him up."

Peter's face went blank. Edmund would've found it funny, if he hadn't felt like his whole body was going to revolt any second.

"You…you must be joking…" Peter replied, now bewildered, and Ed could see in his eyes, starting to wonder if his little brother was still in there somewhere.

And Edmund, who had spent many months training himself not to rely on anyone, not to allow anyone to help him, not to trust even his big brother…  
Edmund lashed out at Peter with a verbal assault every bit as vicious as the physical assault he'd meted out only hours before.  
He told Peter he hated him; wished he would mind his own business and stay out of his life. That he didn't give two pence if Peter was around or not, so he may as well not waste his energy fussing over every little thing he, Edmund, did.

And he said it all very calmly, and quietly. So calmly, in fact, that Peter believed him.

"I didn't know what I did, Ed, but I'm sorry, and I love you." Peter replied quietly, defeated and heartbroken.

"Bugger off." Edmund replied, and shoved his way through the crowd, and away from Peter. The guilt was starting to surface again, and Edmund was trying hard to hold onto his anger; trying not to run back to his big brother and cry, like he had when he was five.

When one large, burly body didn't move as he elbowed through the crowd, Edmund paused and looked in to the face attached. It was Sullivan, and he was grinning. The only distress Edmund felt was that Peter was going to see him beaten up, and probably jump in, and then what good would any of it have been?

"Very nicely done, Pevensie," Sullivan said, and Edmund just looked at him. "Oh, come on, now. We gave you a rough time to get a rise out of Golden Boy, there," indicating the direction where Peter's friends were grouped around him, probably trying to cheer or console him. "If we'd known you weren't like that one, we'd've let you be."

Edmund's expression shifted slightly. "You would've?" He inquired, uncertain, and Sullivan laughed.

"We will," he said, "and after the pummeling you gave that pipsqueak Kale today, I think a few of us wouldn't mind getting to know you."  
*

To Edmund's surprise, Sullivan and three of his mates sat down with him at lunch the next day. The day after, he was invited to sit with them in the larger group. Edmund learned to use his naturally sharp wits—and sharper tongue—for cruelty. The boys who bullied him in months previous became his only friends. And when he saw Peter watching him, longing mixed with disappointment written clearly on his face, Edmund told himself that at least he was no longer a target. These boys had done for Edmund what even Peter could not; they made him feel accepted.

*****

When he finally returned to school after the evacuations, Edmund Pevensie was almost unrecognizable. He was still quick-witted, but he turned his mind to problem solving, and his tongue to energetic debate, rather than insults. When the bullies came for him again, a month after term started, he was ready.

Sullivan, upon finding Edmund much more like his brother—and therefore much less likeable—than when he left school, tried to goad Edmund into a fight. He insulted Ed, his brother, his father, his sisters, and when all else failed, Sullivan insulted his mother. Edmund listened with determinedly neutral expression, and then turned and walked away. In a last effort to provoke him, the other boy called Edmund a coward and told him to stop running away. Edmund kept walking. The older boy darted forward and grabbed Edmund by the shirt collar, whipping him around and pulling him nearly off his feet.

However, when Edmund's calm expression didn't waver, Sullivan lost his nerve. He realized that Edmund Pevensie was no longer afraid of him.

"Let go, please." Edmund requested calmly, and Sullivan did. Ed backed up two steps and turned, bouncing off someone's chest. He knew before he looked up that it was Peter.

"Everything alright, Ed?" Peter asked, eyes fixed on Sullivan. The other boy was standing stock still, having just noticed that the older Pevensie was there, and wondering if he was going to find that the tables would turn further still. Ed smiled up at his brother.

"I think I've finally got it sorted," he replied.


End file.
